Support Costs

[Phil Steinmeyer]

In the localization thread, and others, I've seen a number of mentions of support costs.

What's your ratio of support requests to units sold (i.e. 1 support request per 20 units sold)?

Are these only for games sold directly from your site (i.e. do the portals, at least in theory, offer tech support for the games they sell)?

Are these always handled via e-mail?

How much time/effort do they typically take to resolve?

And what are the most common areas where support is requested (i.e. video probs, sound, other tech issues, billing, lost keys, etc)?

Thanks,
Phil

[Mike Boeh]

After 5 years, I feel like I have this down to a science.

I use webmail and a program called "Castle Paste Pro" to have all my common replies ready from a simple drop-down. And before I try to take on a technical problem, I always get their dxdiag report first, using the following blurb

There's a good chance I can help, but I need to know a little about your PC.

The easiest way to do that is to run DX-Diag, and send me the results.
Here's how:
1. From the start menu, do Start->Run
2. In the little box, type in "DXDiag" and click "OK"
3. DXDiag will run for a minute or two.
4. Click on "Save All Information" then click "Save"
5. It will create a file called "DXDiag.txt" on your desktop, send that file to me. It doesn't reveal any personal nformation, just the technical data for your PC.

It's usually pretty easy to diagnose the problem from there....

If you use outlook, you can just add all your common replies as signatures, and insert them in that way. TheBat! has an even better system, called "quick templates".

[soniCron]

TheBat! has an even better system, called "quick templates".

Waaay off topic: OMG! The Bat!! I totally forgot about that! I used to use it back around '95. Glad to hear they're still around! Thanks for that moment of reminiscing, Mike!

EDIT: Any particular reason you use webmail? For portability?

[cliffski]

I compile my games with the asserts still in. The assert dialog launches a window that offers to email me the source file and line number of the assert. I fix 90% of my bugs right away by doing this.

[mahlzeit]

I simply make games without bugs.

When I was selling my shareware utility, the vast majority of support requests was for people who re-installed their computer and lost their registration code.

Occasionally someone would write in with a feature request. Often these same people would mail repeatedly with new requests or just to check on how things were going. Some of them were perpetual complainers who seemed to believe that their 35 bucks bought them the right to harass me forever with all kinds crazy requests. (Although I have also heard of shareware authors who were being stalked by their customers...)

Sometimes potential customers would ask if the software supported a particular feature.

Refund requests were rare.

Of course, this wasn't a game and the customers were usually computer-savvy. All in all, support didn't take up a lot of time, although if I were to use registration codes again, I would consider automating this kind of support request.

[Mike Boeh]

Waaay off topic: OMG! The Bat!! I totally forgot about that! I used to use it back around '95. Glad to hear they're still around! Thanks for that moment of reminiscing, Mike!

EDIT: Any particular reason you use webmail? For portability?

The bat is still around, and still great :-)

I use webmail because I do tech-support from the office, home, and from the laptop. It just makes things easier.

[Mark Fassett]

The vast majority of my support calls are for those who accidentally purchased the windows version of Derelict, but really wanted the Mac version. Since it's release, a year ago, I've had two technical support requests (for bugs). The easiest way to limit your support costs is to just make the game bug free (or as close as you can get) and easy to use.

[Sillysoft]

I have been able to reduce the amount of time I spend on support by tweaking the problem areas. For example, I used to get a lot of emails saying "I entered the registration code but it didn't work". So in the next update I did more extensive filtering around the registration input (whitespace is stripped, chars that look similar are matched), and I made the error dialog say "Try using COPY and PASTE to enter your code to avoid typing errors". After doing that those requests stopped coming. Similar things have been done in other areas, to try and pre-empt common support problems before they even become an email to me. It's hard to predict what will be your biggest support issues beforehand though.

[James C. Smith]

The easiest way to limit your support costs is to just make the game bug free (or as close as you can get) and easy to use.

Don’t you ever get stuff like “I am stuck on level 42 and can’t beat it no matter what I do. Do you have any hints? Is this a bug? Is it supposed to be this hard?”

Or how about “I purchased this game a few years ago and now I have a new computer. I can’t find the reg code (or the full version download link). How can I get this game I already paid for onto my new computer?”

Most of the support e-mail we handle hase nothing to do with “bugs”.

[Mike Boeh]

100% correct. Or we get people without any video drivers, or a bunch of other things. Bugs in the game are very rare...

Don’t you ever get stuff like “I am stuck on level 42 and can’t beat it no matter what I do. Do you have any hints? Is this a bug? Is it supposed to be this hard?”

Or how about “I purchased this game a few years ago and now I have a new computer. I can’t find the reg code (or the full version download link). How can I get this game I already paid for onto my new computer?”

Most of the support e-mail we handle hase nothing to do with “bugs”.

[arcadetown]

Pretty much how works here. Most issues center around game crashes, full version delivery, and computer crashed need game again. Streamline as much as possible to make things more self service plus work with developers to improve reliability of games. The second part is very crucial, particuarly problematic games that use opengl instead of directx. Customer's get VERY angry over buggy games. So please note to everyone here, try to make games as bug free as possible!!

Our support % seems to unfortunately be growing as install base gets bigger and older. Guesstimate what used to be 1% of users is now about 3 - 4%.

[Robert Cummings]

Time to break out the FAQs

[Mark Fassett]

Don’t you ever get stuff like “I am stuck on level 42 and can’t beat it no matter what I do. Do you have any hints? Is this a bug? Is it supposed to be this hard?”

Or how about “I purchased this game a few years ago and now I have a new computer. I can’t find the reg code (or the full version download link). How can I get this game I already paid for onto my new computer?”

Most of the support e-mail we handle hase nothing to do with “bugs”.

I built a system on my site where people can get their key and the current full version download link mailed to them by entering their email address. The only time it doesn't work is when they've changed email addresses - and I haven't had any of those requests yet.

I haven't recieved any "can't beat this" requests, yet, but then the game has 5 levels of difficulty.

My support requests, so far, have been pretty minimal. But then - I'm not selling near as many copies as Mike

[alessia-lee]

Our support % seems to unfortunately be growing as install base gets bigger and older. Guesstimate what used to be 1% of users is now about 3 - 4%.

Do you calculate this % relative to the total number of customers, or new customers only?
Does the growing number of casual players bring this result?